Bugspotting

Last Updated (Tuesday, 09 September 2008 17:06) Written by Raymond Nakamura

In our backyard the other day, I spotted a small red dome that looked like a ladybug, except it had no spots. How could a ladybug have no spots? Surely it was an omen signaling the end of the world as we know it. Just to be sure, I poked around the internet a little.

How to Address a Lady Correctly
Turns out, I should have been calling it a Lady beetle or Ladybird beetle, because they're not true bugs in the entomological sense. I think the real problem is entomologists shouldn't have taken a common, vague term like bugs to use as a technical term, especially for a relatively more obscure group of insects. But it seems too late. And given that I've taught my almost four-year-old to say "seastar" instead of "starfish," I suppose I should go with beetles. The Lady part has something to do with the Virgin Mary.

In an ID World
Once you know the scientific name of something, it opens doors to finding out so many other things. Sometimes the tricky thing is figuring out what are the useful identifying characteristics. They shouldn't vary too much within a species or be something shared by too many different species. The first time I ever tried to identify an insect I was maybe ten, playing badminton at a camp site. I swatted a dragonfly (an act I am now somewhat ashamed to acknowledge). I tried to ID it with a newly purchased Insect guide but to no avail. At last I realized that the poor specimen no longer had a head. No wonder it didn't look like the ones in the book.
Now with the internet, of the roughly four hundred species of Lady beetle found in North America, I was able to find something that looked the same.
For a second opinion, I decided to bug Karen Needham, the Curator of the Spencer Entomology Collection at UBC. She told me that you can't always be sure from a photo, but that it was probably Cycloneda polita, a native species. It's also known as the Polished Lady beetle or the Western Blood-Red Lady beetle.

This Eats That World
Like most Lady beetles, they and especially their alligatorish larvae munch on aphids, which is why gardeners like to have them around. Turns out that not too many things munch on them. Under attack, they release a nasty tasting fluid from their leg joints. Their bright colour patterns make it easier for visual predators to remember they don't make a good meal.

If this has whet your appetite to become a Coccinellidologist  (Ladybird beetlemaniac), then find out how you could help study them.

What kinds of ladybird beetles have you spotted lately?

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